202201_2B_Meet-Me - SoomeenHahm Design

Fused Assemblies
StyleGAN (generative adversarial network), Generative & spacial assembly

The Hahm studio section will look at a specific designing and modeling workflow using StyleGAN (image generating tools based on AI training process) and agent based modeling tools to create built environments co-habitat both human and non-human entities. While designing the habitation for both human and non-human entities by looking at the discrepancies of the two, creative moments of clashing and harmony are expected to emerge.

In this project, we specifically look at intertwining library and data center at the very center of downtown LA. The section designs series of modular inhabitation based on the inspiration came out from selected StyleGAN images and

assembles using algorithmic process. The section looks at creative ways to use technologies as modeling and design tools to search for unexpected solutions and creativity for design aesthetics.

Course Abstract
2B studio will extend student’s spatial investigations from the site to the world beyond and look at ecology as a context. The studio will explore a range of methods to engage with environmental and ecological issues in developing a complex building program at a dense urban site. By negotiating with the environmental conditions and energy usage, the studio will look at the building as the interface that mediates between the programmatic spaces it houses and the ecology it inhabits, forging a site-specific relationship between them. Projects will investigate program organization and alternative building typologies as a response to ecological and environmental issues, with an emphasis on the relationship between internal and external areas, considering the outdoor space as a critical element of the architecture. Through drawings, digital modelling and simulation, new modes of time-based representation will be employed to set the scene for emerging narratives and architectural ecologies. The studio seeks to explore the tension and boundary between the natural and the artificial and question the meaning of landscape in a changing world.

Course Description
On the fourth floor of One Wilshire, one of many unassuming office buildings in Downtown LA, is a continuous expanse of floor to ceiling cages, full of cables and server rooms. This ‘Meet-Me Room’ (MMR), a telecommunication term, is the most inter-connected floorspace in the world. It is where primary internet connecting fiber optic cables traversing across the Pacific Ocean have come to be routed, split and shared.

Within two blocks of the world’s densest Meet-Me Room is a cluster of data centers, all huddling close to where the submarine cables end up, taking advantage of this proximity to minimize connection latency. They form an ecosystem of data centers and their highly specified infrastructures to feed this energy hungry enterprise, accounting for one-third of internet traffic between the US and Asia. If One Wilshire goes down, much of the US and the world will be brought into information darkness. Civilization hanging by a thin cable.

While the internet has come to define civilization, its progress was once measured in another form of knowledge preservation and exchange in the pre digital era, the library. As the Great Library of Alexandria in Egypt, the largest and most significant libraries of the ancient world, helped the city of Alexandria to be regarded as the capital of knowledge and learning in the world, perhaps we too could look to Downtown LA for the same affirmation, for it is also home to numerous libraries, from small to large, general to specialist.

In contrast to the data center and its non-human occupancy, the library is a place for the people, whether solitary reading or public gathering, it is designed for human interactions and with human interface. Unlike the tight corridors and minimally and artificially lit spaces inside data centers, natural daylight and generous circulations are welcome here. However, as with the data center, the library stores data and information, requiring the same degree of climatic control, their racks equally compressed, their artifacts equally precious. It is where anyone from any culture and of any race come together, virtually or IRL (in real life).

In this studio, we will design an Ecology Library and Data Center, at a site in Downtown LA.
Adding to its network of specialist libraries and an existing ecosystem of data center infrastructures, the project will explore the alternative typologies for this hybrid program, seeking an unexpected dialogue between the public and the infrastructural, and considers how one negotiates with the other, one as the poche of the other.

As both the data center and the library require large amount of energy to main their highly controlled environments, the project questions the building typologies traditionally associated with these two programs and calls for a novel response to engage with ecological and environmental issues. In the dense urban context where real estate value is measured in GFA, could there be an alternative value system where indoor space can be supported and enhanced by outdoor space and landscape considered as a critical element of the architecture.

Through the design of the Ecology Library and Data Center, projects will seek to examine the relationship between the architecture and its context, the program and its environment, the indoor and outdoor spaces, and how architecture could engage with the ecology, and the changing nature of the environment we inhabit.

Project Overview
The project is structured in three parts:

Part 1 SITE – Analysis
All studio sections will begin the project by visiting and mapping the site in order to understand its immediate context and environment. Each group will map a different existing condition of the site and its surrounding, contributing to a combined study of the ecology of the site and its context.

Part 2 MOMENTS – Formal strategies
Each studio section will investigate and explore alternative modes of design approach and methodology to develop a formal strategy. The result of this investigation will be manifested in a series of three-dimensional moments as spatial prototypes.

Part 3 LIBRARY AND DATA CENTER – Building proposal
Informed by the formal strategies explored in the Part 2, students will develop a building design for an Ecology Library and Data Center. A detailed program brief will be provided to students at this stage to develop the project. The final proposal will be represented in a set of drawings and an animated film to portray the building design. Details of deliverables for each review will be released in due course.

LinkTree – 2B
https://linktr.ee/SCIARC_2B22

Syllabus
Full https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZHWERbD_5pp-7CRxbTISjeXm8B4sCBgo/view

Site [ 6th Hope St, DTLA ]
https://goo.gl/maps/bGZxZEUWCw8f93hK9

Program
Ecology Library & Data Center
Size: 75,000 ft² / 7,000 m²

Site Spec
Site Area: 0.65 acres / 0.26 hectares (2,600 m²)
Size: 200ft x 130ft / 65m x 40m

Hahm Studio Roster
Byron Roberts
Stephen Liao
Ari Diamond-Topelson
Spencer Clark
Alexandria Brady
Jun Hyeong Lee
Olesya Jain
Miriam Alghanim
Xinyu (Dawson) Zhang
Chenxi (Chauncy) Huang
Takeru Kondo

Final Video SuperCut [ edited by Jennifer Chen ]